Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Episode 9: Osage | We're Alive: Frontier | Season 1

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Dangerous inhabitants in the ruins of Jefferson City derail the survivors' plans. Based on the hit We’re Alive podcast, Ivan Van Norman leads a game of survival for a group of players on a mission through the infected undead-ridden midwest. Want to go deeper into the world of We’re Alive? Check out the complete We’re Alive saga here: www.werealive.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You punched the throttle. You can hear the steam just, this train is just not stopping. You can see men have now pulled out their guns and have started firing into the side of the rail drive. As you hear the plin, plin, fli, fli, fling of it going against the armored side of your sleeper car. What do you want to do?

To push them back, but we did. What was once a prosperous river trade, the Mississippi is now the front line. The eastern states supply the river states. And what's left to the UA live out their meager day self-policing. What is the West hiding? Nobody really knows for sure. But we're alive.

And this is the new frontier. What do you want to do? Shooting. Okay. Shooting. Race, you're prone. Is there anything you want to do besides getting up? I want to roll out of bed.

And all of us are in the car except for Jenny, who's in the other... I'm upstairs. Everyone's in the sleep of cart except for Jenny. I'm actually gonna go check on Kent and see how he is. I'm living, but I'm injured still. My head is I did take the four points of damage. You did not be ready to fight.

All right, I'm conscious. All right, brief. You can see that the board's been broken and a small piece of wood is kind of holding it on, but you can actually see rail track on the other side of the wood speeding right underneath As you see, he pushed it out to a point of where it's not a full break, but it's a compound fracture. Okay.

Well, his, what's, what? The wood. The wood is a compound. Not his skull. Not his skull. The wood plank. It just basically came out. Coming out of the side.

All right. I want to pull out my pistol and ready it, and I'm waiting basically watching the to see if anybody tries to come around to get underneath. Okay. Great, great. I'm going to start, I'm groaning and feeling like that. tenderness around my eye and I'm gonna take the moment while prone to kind of roll under the bed. Okay. I'm getting under. Getting undercover. I hear the bullets. Oh yeah, everyone here's the

people. I'm just taking cover. And it's hitting the side. Yeah. Jenny? I keep driving. Drive check. And I yell back. I can't see anything. Let me know if anything, I don't know, important comes up. Just people. Keep going. All right. Drive check. Drive, drive check shooting no speeds necessary in this okay so take three for me too for you mm-hmm okay three and three what failures failures failures all right Jenny how'd you like this to go down with the rail driver or would you like me to narrate it move sorry it was involuntary I love you all I'd like you to narrate it all right with the three I can imagine that

that you start to see is this thing starting to lift up and it's basically pressing against it as your speed is slowing down significantly. In fact, you're coming almost to a short crawl as the 15 miles an hour that you were coming into, you basically got about another five or six before you impacted this thing. And it's brought you down to a pretty miserable six miles an hour.

You can feel this thing just creaking as you can actually see it's being pushed up and the bottom wheels are now pricing into the window, making it even harder to see because now you're seeing the undercarriage of the bus just basically press into it as it's starting to lean against the side of the rails. And you can actually hear as dirt is starting to pull it up,

making even more resistance. Yes. Three degrees of success. Great. Am I able to see the shooters? From the southern end of Jackson, Jefferson City, basically into the city, you can see the shooters who are all leveling

their machine guns. What does it look like past them? You can kind of see the town of Jefferson City laid in front of you. You catch glimpses of long streets that have been pulled up with cobblestones replaced, much like what you saw in St. Louis. You can actually see people driving rickshaws everywhere as you're watching people ducking and covering,

cowering now. You can see some people who seem to be dressed up in nice leather tunings. kind of like showering away from the people who are currently being shot at. And you can actually, well, if you wanna give me a degree of success, I can give you a little more information. You can start to see in the back of some of the rickshaws

are people sitting on top of it, like old style pool cards. Yeah, that's what I thought. And people are pulling onto it. There's men who are sitting onto it, old rickshaw style, but you can also see a cage sitting in the back of the rickshaw in which you can see people inside of it

as well. You keep going. You keep going and you don't stop until something stops us. How do you want to resolve your others? I want to aim as many targets as I can at the shooters. At the shooters?

Yeah. All right. Then two dice, two depletion. 10, 15. So how much total? 20. 20. All right, you level it and you basically do a burst fire

and you watch as one man just takes it right up his chest. As you watch it just, too, as he kind of like falls down, lump dead. He didn't have any protection on, so you just riddled right through him. Just one day. People just start screaming as they saw him fall down

into this, and the rail driver just continues to the metal, just, as is just pulling it along at a steady, small pace. And you can see the man who dropped, the other two look at the rail driver, and they see it, and they just start running straight for the beast itself. Okay.

Yes. I call back to Band-Aid. Get in here. Just get in here. I need you to drive this. Okay. I pick Ray's rifle that she gave me and I pointed out the window.

Okay, through the front window? Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna start crawling out from under the bed and heading up to it, but I'm like blurred in one eye. Right. And as you transfer over from one car to another, the man is starting to hop up onto the rail driver,

grabbing what little purchase that he can as you transfer from one car to another, and you can kind of see he has paint all over the front of his chest. As you can kind of see his hands are deep red on either side of his arms. Is he on the conductor car or the sleeper car? He's on the sleeper car,

but he's right in between where the connections are for both of them. As he basically comes up and he has his pistol kind of pulled up and he attempts to take a shot at you, but by the time you're already into the other car and slam the door. And I lock it. Lock it, right.

So you're in, your intent, driving on there. We have Rayth. Ray said she's shooting still. My intent is to look at Rayth. Should we get outside on top of the car? We need to use the rail driver's cover or leave it as a distraction and try to escape other ways. But I'll leave it up to Jenny. For now, let's just stay in here and try to defend ourselves best as we can.

Jenny? Cover our openings. Do you think putting more wood in there is going to make it go faster? Door shut, right? Yeah, I locked the door. I threw some coal in because I'm trying to give it as much power. I'm hoping that there was something that'll just like... You're dumping the coal in there then. Okay.

So my intention is... So you're not shooting, you're putting coal in there. Yeah, I'm going to put some coal, and I need you to like keep on the throttle. My intention is to draw my hatchet and walk towards the sleeper car entrance where the guy is above. To pop the hatch? Pop the hatch to possibly, yeah, you know what I'm saying? My intention is to go over to the hatch to stand by and wait with the hatch. Oh, you're gonna stay by the hatch.

Not open it. Okay, you're just waiting with the hatchet. Exactly. Okay, great. So just race shooting then. Mm-hmm. Okay, go ahead. 29, it's five degrees of success.

Nice. Okay, do you wanna take out more targets? Multiple targets. Then roll more depletion. You have five degrees of success, so it's five on top of the two, that's seven. And then you can roll all the dice. And as we're still going,

just because I can actually see where I'm firing. There other than the giant bus in our way, There are no things to block our path on the train's back ahead. I mean, you're looking over it. I'm looking over the bus. And the clearance that the bus is giving you now on either end is making it so you're going to start hitting buildings, not full-blown buildings, but like vendor carts and shanties and other elements that have been put into it. It actually seems like a lot of the rail is clear, but there's a lot on the side that this bus is going to be running into.

How many damage do I get, though? Seven. Seven. If you're rolling it all. If you're using them all for damage, you get seven. There's a lot of dice. That's what happens to me of a fully automatic weapon. Is you exploding with the damage?

Do this over here. There we go. Okay. The damage is, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-ma. Twenty-seven-thirty plus four, 34. 34. Three-four. Depletion was 10, 16.

18, 18, 23, and two, so we're good. Nice, 25, okay. So as you basically start just full auto, you're just laying this thing out as much as you can, you do hit a few more that are unloading their rifles into you. So a couple of bogies, but definitely as you're spraying along, it's difficult to tell, you're seeing people duck in cover, but you can definitely start to hear the screams of people

who feel like they've been hit. And as you've been moving essentially at this six miles an hour, You are unable to avoid someone who is just trying to run past them and just take them down as well as the two other people who have long guns alongside. And you can see them just on the ground holding their legs just wailing pain as you drop the other two dead. On we go.

Oh God! Oh, God! As you see as his wails start to have more people peering out as the metal screeching and the gunshots are all just waking the entire city up. As you start to see a man who seems to be just running down with several other people behind him as it just seems like a small militia

is now coming forward down in the Genese City. This is real bad. We're running out of steam. I don't think it's gonna go any further. Well, let me tell you about that. You've put the coal in there. And the coal is definitely heating this thing up and you can actually start to feel yourself

gain a few miles an hour. But you can still hear it just screeching. You're still only going 10 miles an hour at this stage. The conductor's room is just violently shaking as much as it possibly can as it's trying to push the bus and both cars at the same time. We have another round. We do.

We do. Oh, I should also tell you about who's coming inside. So Band-Aid, the man you saw grab a hold of the side of this rail car. He just comes across to the side, leaning toward the sleeper car, and he looks inside of this. He takes the back of his pistol, which actually has a spike that's been welded into the clip.

I thought that door was closed. It is closed. As a window? Yeah. You can kind of see his face as he looks in, it just jams it in and just all goes white as the spike comes all the way through. And the three of you in the sleeper car

can see his back as he pops it right into the side. Well, I can't see it. I'm up there. Yeah, you're up there. You too. I wish I could see it. All right, and you can start to hear the footsteps of a couple of other people

who have seemed to have gotten on top of the train at this time as well, too. I have my hatchet drawn. Yeah. I want to try and chop his arm off or poke him through. through the slit. So if he's hanging on the door,

he swung himself up. And now he's sitting in between both of the cars. Yeah, so there's a door. And his back is to me, so he can't see me. And I have a clear window shot. Wow. Well, their door is, their door was open because we were traveling back and forth.

Yeah, their doors open, okay. Okay, so then I'm just gonna. You might have done something different, but we committed. I'm gonna coup de graham in the back. All right. That's gonna be a melee attack roll as you're gonna try to put this thing in his back.

Ray, you're still shooting? Yeah. Yeah, still shooting, you're still just unloading this AK. Bandane. I'm going to turn around and use my butt to push on the throttle, and then I'm going to pull my pistol and aim at the hole in the window. Okay, all right, so that's a shoot. That's how throttles work, right?

I could just keep it. Well, it's already just like this. All right, unload your pistol. Jenny, you're shoveling coal. Yeah, I stopped shoveling coal and I pull out my machete. Great, all right. And Rayth. Have I seen any movement from this patched opening or partially damaged opening on the back of the thing?

Okay, I want to try to move up to halfway in the sleeper car, like close to where the ladder is, and then I'm going to hold and try to look back and forth. Basically, I'm watching to see how the round goes and see if I see anybody coming through the opening at the back, or if he has some problem with the guy in between the cars, you know, then I'm going to try to shoot with my pistol in either direction. Can I see the guy on top of the sleeper car? Because you said that someone jumped onto the sleeper car. Absolutely.

There's another guy on top. Yeah, there's a gentleman who has pulled himself up. In fact, you can see that he's kind of taken a combat knife and he's jammed it into the top of the sleeper car so that he can use it to pull himself up. So we're doing our composure role. Yeah, just reaction, saving throw composure. Composure role to see if you can manipulate the time. I got two degrees of success. Three degrees of failure.

Okay. So not for you, but Raith, yes. Okay. round where you know Rayth can either determine what he wants to do with targets inside of the sleeper car which there are none at the moment unless you count the guy in between cars yeah which is which he's trying to take care of he's trying to take care of okay but you I'll let you pick your speed next round okay essentially at this stage and we'll go into it so Kent just rolled a two or

your oh how many degrees of success is that or five five yes would you just like to resolve them all into his back I would. Okay. Then your hatchet gives you a base of one. You may roll five more dice with it. Absolutely. Six.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Five, six, seven, plus seven, 14. 14? Yeah. From the door open and you watch as he pulls the spike in, and as he's pulling it out, you just take your hatch and just jam it right into his spine. As you watch, it's like blood starts to pull around.

He just screams. He! as he kind of like tries to grab the weapon behind him. Probably thinking better about checking the open door before going for the closed door, as he kind of turns around and he stumbles out of the car, but not before trying to grab and take you down with him. You're making a pose grapple check with me.

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Wayfair, every style, every home. Four. And you got degrees of success. For my grapple, that would be three. Would you like to narrate how you narrowly avoided getting pulled off the train from this guy with a vice like grip? Does he go under the wheels?

As I throw the fireman's ax into his spine, he screams, he turns around, and he catches my arm because I gave him a little smile. He goes to pull me down and he almost does, but I managed to grab the side of the doorway and hang on, but he still got my arm until I finally just say, fuck off. And I pull my hand and he goes right under the train

and just, it just jumps ever just so slightly as his body clears the rail and you look behind you and gore is now strung out everywhere across the rail line. Is the weapon that he used still in the window? No, he pulled it out. Okay, cool. So I just see that. Right.

And I'm gonna go after the guy on the hood. Yeah. Fuck. Two degrees of failure. All right, how do you wanna resolve it? Point down at him and can it jam for two? Yeah, I can jam for two. So as you've been unloading this thing,

you've been heating the barrel up, and you basically, Pricishing against it and as you attempt to pull your gun up it just the just bolt just slides right into it and it catches and it jams And at that point you actually see him level a pistol up on the top as he attempts to take a shot at you Fuck me so I'd like you to make a Dodge saving throw that's not gonna work out well It's a thin slit though. It's a very yeah What is that two degrees of failure one degree of failure with one degree of failure with one degree of failure? I'm gonna be rolling two damage dice against you

with Y1 degree of success. Okay. All right? All right. So you're gonna take a two and a four result, having the bullet essentially graze against you as you watch it whizz by you and you kind of feel something burning along the side of your head.

I don't even either. Yeah. It's just an ear. As you pull your head down in time, but just barely, in fact, it may even just be on the top of your scalp more than it is on the side of your head. So, all right. All right, take those two results of four and a two

at this stage. This rail driver is just peeling down the side of Jefferson City along this railway, which for the purposes of our diorama here is, yes, along that street, reimagine that street as the rail line being pursed through Jefferson City here, what was once Jefferson City. And that city bus is currently what you're dragging

front of you as you're moving along the line. And as much as I appreciate the visual element of what's going on inside of here, really, Ray, you're the only one that has any idea what's coming up at this stage. And these ramshackle homes that I was talking about as part of it, you can see a huge portion of that. And of course, what is happening now,

which is just a, as the left side of the rail driver just impacts bricks, as it hits the side of the building, and you feel the grinding of the wheels as it just comes to stop. And you can feel the heat as Bandage, you're looking at the throttle behind you, and you can feel as kind of like the instruments,

the gauges are just, or just, but you can see a lot of, while the gauges that are showing no more's going into it, the pressure is still incredibly high. I gotta, yeah, I'll do that. I'll release the steam. I've seen her do it a million times. Right.

Pull the steam valve. As you watch, it's just a plume smoke, just pf! It's cold, it's black dust as well too, as it just kind of releases all of the external steam from the boiler. And fuck it, I pull the horn, and I keep it down. It's long, as long as it'll go.

I'm mad and a black eye. What do you want to do? It's a new round? It's a new round, and we're now working on speed. In fact, Ray, I'll give you a little bit of extra information since you're sitting up at the top here at the moment. The guys that were originally on top of it have now hopped over to this part of the bus, kind of using that as their cover. And Ray, you can see a guy sitting on top who seems to be climbing up from the top of this building here with something.

as you can watch the militia men that I was telling you about starting to run on this side of Osage as they're barreling down the street, yelling the entire time. Guys, they're coming from all sides. We need to get off the rail. We need to get off the rail and find cover. All right, let's go back and unlock the door in between cars.

Okay. Oh, is the pistol dudeer still pointing his pistol in me at me, in my thing? Oh yeah, but since the damn thing just came to a grinding halt, he just spun off. It is now off the top of the rail driver. If we're not coming back, we should grab essential supplies. My head's still bleeding.

Okay, we'll come running back into the sleeper car, check everything out, and then, yeah, just grabbing anything that I would normally have grabbed for a mission or something like that and stuffing it in the code. Beyond what's in the rail driver, you have what is on you, what's in your possession at this moment. Yeah. If there's anything you want to cash out now,

as far as the rail driver goes. We should just grab you. We have to have ammo. Ammo? Yeah, ammo and we have enough first aid kits? Some medical stuff. Yeah, I've got my first aid kit. I'll take one, two, and more ammo.

So you'll take a first aid kit. That'll take you down to 53. Great. So, in a last ditch few seconds, you're able to just pull all of the intermediate cartridges that are left inside of the rail driver into an ammo crate, a race. You just grab a handful of basically heavy cartridges

and just stuff them into any pocket or any bag that you may have alongside of you. Here's those intermediate and heavy cartridges. And you managed to pull the last first aid kit. That's from the side of the rail driver as well too. As you can see loose ammo and various effects out of everywhere, but now you can start to hear the people banging against the side of the door.

Kent, break the back. The back of the rail car? Break it. Come on out of here. We've got you surrounded. Don't try to put up a fight anymore. You only end up dead. Well, hang on, just a sec.

We'll be right out. And then I'm gonna just run straight and charge it. Okay, run straight and charge it. Just lift, pull for me. Just kick this damn thing. Breach check. It's already. Over in there.

Breach, breach, breach, breach. Breach, breach. 62. So it's a one degree success. Great, I'll roll a damage dice against it. It was already damaged beforehand. Remember from when you slammed inside of it. So a result of five, we'll just,

punch it right out. So you take your hatchet and you just finish the break as you just cleave it through and then use your foot to kick out the rest of the repair damage that Jenny did against the side of it. And now you have this little slip in the back that you can all slide underneath. So.

Let's go. Which by the diorama is like back here. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically all the way back here. All right. You can hear the cries and yells of people, again, just trying to break in through that front as they see no one's in there now.

It's like, where'd they go? Ah, shit. All right, go around. See if you can find him. Yeah, yeah, look out for him. Just, uh, Manupol. Just look out on top of there, all right? Just keep an eye on them.

Anyone pokes their head out. Don't shoot them. Just scare him. And you'll see as he kind of manuPaul is up there all the way where that billboard is, and you can just kind of see him put his hand up like this as a fist as a confirmation. You can hear them stalking and moving around at this point.

We've all gotten out. We've all gotten out. Out of the back. You've all creeped out. And I'm assuming you're keeping low, crouching your bags, whatever you've got on you, laid and out, as you're abandoning the rail driver. It pains me to give them such a gift.

Ray, we need you to lead the team here. Stealth. We've got to get somewhere to hide. Get us somewhere safe. I still got two Molotovs. I've got you. I'm just. I still got too polandage. It's hard to see where everybody is now

as you creep around the side, but, if you're taking point, which means you could make the stealth checks, who's taking the rear in this stealth mission, this lay low mission, which by the way, for the record, with everything that's inside of here, it's gonna give me more risk. Five for all of you going out,

and then because of this shit hole that you're in right now, another 10. So it's gonna take me to 20. Yeah, and then he- Starting a mission inside of the town. I want to look and see if there are any sort of structures and stuff because we're not on this actual diorama yet, are we? We're on the far side of it over here.

But it probably looks similar. And this way is north, right? That's actually south. Oh yeah, because this is west. So if you imagine right after that building to the right of you, around, yeah, where his magical hands kind of flippity-floppy.

There's actually that pit. would very much accurately represent the Missouri. So I wanna look up to the north and see if there's any cover, because I mean, I can't, I don't know what, because there's no diagram there, I don't know, what does the terrain look like to the north of us?

It's essentially sandbank or river bank before you get into the river. It's very open, right? It's very open. Okay, what's to the south? The south is a lot of what you see here, broken down buildings, Some completely complete, some not.

And a lot of military pop-up tents, canvas tents. Some look like they've actually been made with leather. Like old leather, not old leather, fresh leather. I wanna look for the nearest sort of tent type structure and ready my knife. And then I'm gonna say to these guys, be like, we'll make a bee line for that tent. I'll make an opening and we'll take cover.

But when you in the center, turn and cover us with your weapons, but move quietly and slowly. Don't raise yourself above waist height. I still have a sting stick. When you go to the tent, you want me to throw it by the river in the stone? It'll do nothing against these people.

Maybe something's in the river and we can get it right out. It's a distraction. We can't work on the variables we don't know. Go ahead. Throw your stealth check. You'll be making a check for everybody. Okay.

That's real good. Six. So let's see, my stealth is 67. So that's five degrees of success. Okay. Take them all and tell me how you'd like to have this story play out, including, by the way, the knife if you want to use it. Okay, so I go over to the first sort of tent,

like this thing at the bottom of diagram is a tent looking thing, right? We're on one of those, but on the next, the next board over, right? Next board this way, south? Well, I can't get into that tent, can't. Okay, you could, you could actually make it all the- without being seen by these dudes on top of the stuff.

They don't see it. Okay. They're actually inspecting, they've gone in, into the rail driver at this point, and they're not looking outside. Okay, so I move across, and then I use my knife to cut a slit in this tent. Right, use three to get over there,

since you made it all the way down the length of the rail driver. And then you can use one to cut it open and get everybody inside, leaving you one left over for whatever you want. All right, I mean, I look in the tent. Is there anything going on in the tent that's dangerous to us? You open it, ever so slightly to peer into it,

and you see blood, blood everywhere. as you look on a bunch of tables carved and slatted meat that's laid out. In fact, you can see a large bar, the same thing that's holding the canvas together up, is also a support bar for large chunks of meat that are hanging and being carved out like a butcher's slat. You can see the live bodies of men and women

as they've been flayed in skin and smaller bodies being hung like chickens along the side of this large. in the interior canvas tent. Buckets have been placed underneath them for the blood draining below them. And entrails are either strewn about or placed into smaller containers placed to the side.

It stinks. So I've turned to the rest of the group and I kind of motion them over, but then I make eye contact with these people and there's just this look on my face, like you know me, you know that I'm basically just I'm basically just telling you with my eyes, kind of like be prepared for what you're about to see.

Will saves. Yeah. Everybody. As we go in. As you go in. Just straight up willpower. Straight up willpower. Any successes, any failures?

Well, I'm at one failure then. One failure. Three six. Three six. Three six. So this isn't a mechanic we've talked about too much at this point, because we haven't really had a morale-breaking thing.

Like we are having. right now, but with the amount of failures and the horrors that you're seeing inside of this tent, I think it's appropriate to remove the morale of your team. So in the psyche section, you've got your total morale, and it's gonna go down by one. I lost one morale. Yeah. I lost one morale.

I lost one morale. I lost one morale. So seeing kind of this horror in front of you, we haven't played with the element of morale in this game very much, but with some I don't think this horror stricken in front of you. Just... You said there were little bodies in there too.

It's blatant. The gore that's inside of there. It is immense having this way down upon you. And the four of you, Raith, Jenny, Band-Aid, and Kent, we're going to take your morale done by one on this. This is important because morale is a lot like health. If you lose all of your morale,

you've essentially lost the will to live. world is too much for you. Civilization is not her saving and there's no point in going on. So at this point, this is the first real tipping. So what about our coping mechanisms? When it's time, you can negate the morale with coping mechanisms. But at this point, it's just, this was hidden for a reason and you guys stumbled upon it. So now, now what? There's children in there. I know. I'm gonna take a moment,

I'm gonna turn around from everything that's going on, and I'm gonna try to piece together the tarp, at least so it's shut. Scrimp it. Yeah, okay. No problem. And I'm taking a moment for myself. Yeah. We can't stay here long.

We need to move to the next place of cover. I can't. You tell yourself, you don't know, like the smaller bodies are so hard to tell. this could be animals as well too, but the fact that there's clearly adult human bodies in there, you're having a hard time coming to that terms with yourself of what is true and what isn't in there.

Yeah, you're gonna peek out through the front entrance to see, because there is clearly a flap that you didn't cut open that was the entrance into this place. Well, before we move, they called out to someone above. There may be coverage. On the other side? Can we make a small hole so that you can poke your scope out and take a look around there's windows in there they've been rolled down

rolled down in order to cover it so can we do a spot listen absolutely can more than one person do a spot listen well there's multiple whole multiple holes to look out of multiple windows are there are two windows to look out great well the thing is we don't want too many people to right right right right we don't give away our position so it's the highest spot list let's just have the two people who have the highest exactly who has that who I don't think I do it's never me I think it's you yeah but I am I am I am I am I I'm out of commission for right now.

Right. Who else has above 39? Mine's 41. I have 44. How about you? You want to do a quick spot listen? Good girl. How about you?

One degree of failure. Four degrees of success. I'm gonna give you all the information you need with that much. Let's decide how you want to resolve failure. I lift up the roll and there's actually so much blood on the stained on the windows that I can't see anything and I just put it right down.

Great, that's perfect. So, Jenny, you can clearly see these armed militiamen. They have a mix of body armor and regular kind of combat gear, but you can also see there's just part of them that just have these ritualistic tattoos covering them everywhere. As you're kind of watching them stalk around the rail driver, you can hear the cries of the people. behind you and the people around here.

In this building, you're starting to see people come out through this main door. And you can see one of these men is essentially ushering people out. And you can see he kind of looks like he's ushering out families out of this large building here, hurting them out, basically pushing them away. Get out, get out, get. We have outsiders here.

Outsiders. Make sure they don't see you. They've been sure. shooting at us. And as they usher them out, they kind of pull away people as they start running towards this part of the building. What do the people look like? Do they look like the people running the rickshaws or sitting in the passengers? They look like the people who were sitting in the rickshaws.

In the cages or in the cages? The upper class people. They look like they're well dressed. They look like survivors. They don't look like the people in loincloths at all. They look like people who are maybe living. in that building and now they're being evacuated out. And you are hearing more than seeing the men in the rail driver just continuing to bang around it.

You can start to hear them, start to sorting through a lot of your stuff at this stage. And you actually briefly hear the steam just for a second where it sounds like they're fiddling with all of the controls that are inside of the rail driver, finding out what it is, what's going on. But you don't think anyone is seeing you at the moment. They're looking, though.

They're all just kind of scanning around the horizon, checking any part, and there's one sitting around like a sentry, just looking everywhere across the expanse he can. Feel like the only real way to get out of here is to get ourselves dressed in something else that makes us look like one of them. Is there anything on the floor in the tent, bloody otherwise? Or take valuable hostages.

Get out and do what? Do what? We get out of this city and what? There's only three of them. And there's five of us that we can see for now. We don't know how much further it is to the city limits. We've got a whole city against us.

Not if they don't know we're us. You're right. We need to change our clothes. With the amount of gear we're carrying, we will not easily disguise ourselves. Maybe we stash the gear somewhere. Here? I don't know, not in this room, but somewhere.

People aren't going to be coming in here. I don't trust our ability to act and play a different part in front of these people as much as our ability to hide and move quickly. We need a distraction and we need to go. That's my opinion. Why don't we try and lure them out with a flash bang or something and then mad break for it? We don't know how far we're going or where we're going. We do know where we're going because the railroad will go outside of the city. It continues on.

If we follow the railroad or the road, or the road. railroad or the river, we can get out of here. If we threw a flashbang, we could run across the middle, straight into the river, go around the back of the building. Maybe he might see us on top. Is that us? That tent? Yeah, we're in that tent. We're in that tent.

That's the abattoir tent. Well played. I got you now. So what's the plan? Create a distraction. Try to move from cover to cover. and how's that going down? The war is over and both sides lost.

Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.

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I have a smoke grenade. Okay. There are two things we can use. We can use a flashbang as a distraction and a smoke grenade to make people think that something's on fire. With people in it, I don't know, anything. Maybe the smoke grenade could create cover like a bank. If you throw it, that smoke grenade, it's going to cover half of that diorama. Yeah.

Like maybe like try to cover this half. Yeah. and then we can just go off this way and keep following this line which follows the tracks. Or we could have crossed and follow the river. They're going to expect us to follow the rails. The river has less cover, though. I say we throw the smoke grenade over here so it goes up and blinds the guy on top. I don't think it's going to go.

Jim, they're not inside the rail driver. I don't think it's going to go that high. They have to be out here somewhere. Start checking all the buildings and the rubble. I think the river is too exposed. Okay. If we find more opposition along the train tracks, we can always move down. Who's got a high throw?

I do take take this Bruce much I don't see him out here anywhere throw it out through the front I'm gonna throw the grenade where I want to throw it right in the middle of the street right in right there you gonna step out and you talk about the flash bang or the smoke the smoke grenade I'm gonna pull the pin first I mean the smoke we're kind of trying to cover the top this this path of the dynamo I'm gonna aim you're gonna pop it let it cook like I said cook for two sex and then I'm gonna toss it right here great go for it make Throw check.

Throw check. 12. Perfect. All right. Wow. That is five degrees of success. Well, then why don't you tell me what happens? So I throw the smoke grenade.

It hits the middle of the street and it distracts. It just waltz. It just starts wafting up. There's no sound, so no, it doesn't make any sound, so no one notices it at first. We use this point right now and we immediately leave the tent. leave the tent. We run straight into the smoke. Fire, fire, smoke. Someone go get water. They've set a fire. Don't stop. We'll follow. All right. Keep going. You can use your four if you'd like to just mow in there. And basically, since you're taking lead on this thing, I'll allow you to take all

the rest of your degrees of sex and just go straight into that smoke if you want and take the whole team. Let's go straight into the smoke. Someone keep their eyes on the roof. Keep your eyes towards the bus. Let's Paul put the minis in the center where that smoke is. I thought we were trying to move. Well, yeah, at this point, it's the river of the rails. Yeah, we decided the rails. Okay. And then Kent's in front.

As the smoke lifts up around you, the brisk wind comes in and just whee-sh, kind of just swirls it, and actually scatters it even more than it would be if it was just slowly dissipating out on itself. As you can see a hazy fog now kind of fills the center part. of this crossroads where the rail meets the road. And you can see there's actually starting to be less buildings laid out in front of you. And this is the last tall building that you have to stand in before you start getting

into a lot smaller buildings. And as you run forward, Band-Aid, I would like for you to make a quick spot listen check for me. Two degrees of failure. Okay, great. Bandit is you are running forward, you basically are B-lining, and you all are moving past this,

four-story building that's kind of right there. And you suddenly have a hand grabbed onto your shoulder as you were pulled back onto your back and you slam down prone as you see a man who was previously ushering all of these people out through there, grab you down and put the gun right up against your head and put down, sit down, don't move. What the fuck is going on around here?

Can I spin around? Do I see this? Do I hear this? You hear it, absolutely. As he's just basically just putting his hand right down in there as well it is. Can I spend two cops? competency points to try to stealth around him and just knife him in the base of the neck, like using the fog?

Yes, but I still need a check from you. Okay. Okay, if you would like to just react on that right now, by all means go for it. I liked how quickly you reacted with something to do. So go, roll it right now. That's a 24, that's five degrees of success. That's good.

that you're good at what you do. Tell me how you'd like to resolve it. Okay, yeah, like right after he finished saying what he just said about that thing, I just slide the Viking sword, like down in between his shoulder blades. He didn't even see this coming. There's no reason to roll damage.

As you basically finishes, what the fuck is just happening? Metal Pyle! I found him! As you watch, as the sword just crick through his neck, as it comes right down, you watch as it gurgle, as the sword pulls right out, and he flops down on top of you.

Push him off, push him off. As you roll the body over. We need to move. Go, go, go, go. Real quick, while in there, what is he wearing? He's wearing a leather biker jacket with kind of a bandana wrapped around his neck, which is what the sword went through.

Did I have to spend those points to do that? The two competency points? No, man, you rolled tons of degrees of success. You need to. So you guys just run through that part of the town passing the building by, and you can start to hear men calling out Trum. Ksune, Ksene, is that you?

God damn it, they got right by us. Go get them! And you hear as the men starting to run, as you were running down the street as well, too. Do we know they're directly behind us? You can hear them behind you. You can hear them behind us? Yeah.

Should we try and slow them down as we keep running? Because it's all in the white fog right now. They'll have no idea if we throw a Molotov or something. Light him up. I'm light them up. throwing them all atop. They know we're going this way, right? Make the throw.

Make the throw. You're the throw guy. You're the throw guy. He doesn't get stuck in the mud. 11. All right. Yeah. Five degrees of success.

So you could throw a couple if you wanted to, if you wanted to get all of them out at this point. I have two left. I'm only gonna throw one. All right. I don't think we need the other two. You basically chuck it right into kind of where the fog is as you kind of watch as the bottle, just,

disappears inside of the fog, and you can hear the as the light kind of illuminates an orange inside of the white smoke for a second. You don't hear anything from them, but you can clearly kind of see as its smoke is adding to the white smoke, which is starting to slowly dissipate a little bit at this stage. And you are running. You make it about 100, 150 feet or so, and then very quickly, you look to your right and see that there's an off ramp, leaning down into a highway, loaded. with pre-fall cars and buses,

and anything that looks like it's trying to get out of the city, that hasn't been cleared already. In fact, it looks like a wall of vehicles at this point. So just to be clear, we were running along the railroad, and then there's the ramp, and then there's the highway, and then beyond that is the river. From here, you would have the road, the rails go this way, right?

There would be an on-ramp that would come down into a north-south highway. Going this way. Uh-huh. With crossing, presumably crossing the river. Okay. Along the highway. Are you continuing to run?

Are you stopping to assess? Do you think we should find shelter in these cars? We should regroup in these cars and heal our wounds for sure. Are you stopping to look at it? To look at it or to go down? We're going down. Okay. I think we should keep moving until we get out of the city.

Keep moving. Our wounds are not brief us. We can go along the road, though, instead of the rail. Yeah, yeah. If you think it looks safe. Look for an empty bus, maybe, so we can get in there, and it's safe and closed. Can we spot listen?

Yeah, you can. You can absolutely spotless. I've been looking for shelter, so I'm keeping my. Bad feeling, because I know what was, I know what was written on the, how many of you need? Just give you a bunch.

Yeah, who's looking, who's looking? Oh, gosh, all of us were just doing it. All of us, right? So a lot of the cars have been stripped for metal, for aluminum, for items. That's just along the road itself. And then you can see that some of them are still intact, but the windows have all been broken out, to be raided or looted inside of it.

There isn't, there's plenty of cover. There's definitely large vehicles inside of the road, but nothing that's not like the bus. What does it smell like? It smells like fresh air. Smells. And as you're running down this hillside, you continue to kind of move across,

and you start coming down the line, and suddenly you hear a gunshot, you crack out of the mist, and you hear a wound. So bullet clearly goes in and outside of Band-Aid's shoulder. Three fours. Okay, I have a wound. Yeah.

I went over my damage threshold. That's a flesh wound. I spin and shoot in the direction that that came from. With the AK. With the AK. Just unload into it. Roll depletion. I'm gonna grab a Band-Aid and throw him down

on the ground to get him out of cover against a car. And I'm gonna pull out my bandage that I was gonna use for my head and stuff it immediately onto this. Apply pressure immediately, since it was an exit wound. I also fire okay well unload depletion it's there's a lighter for the automatic weapons there's actually a thing called suppressing fire it's just basically depletion is what you want to do how many depletion dice I don't you just have one to please anything I can grab as far as like bits of

garbage and stuff from the cars to try to drag it over to like make a spot of concealment so we can like get underneath like a car in between sets of cars or get as much cover between us and that I'm trying to find I'm trying to find cover for You actually find a discarded doorframe of a car. You can just drag over and just lift up if you wanted to. All right, so I put that kind of between two like parallel cars or whatever to make ourselves a little bit of hard cover. Right. To treat his wound behind. Easy. I just check to see if there's anything like that and there's plenty. Yeah.

So suppression fire, I have, it looks like it requires one degree of success, but it's one depletion point. Is that, is that, am I reading that right? One depletion? Yeah, one depletion point. So it would do three speed against the character, but it's just, but right now I'm just firing. Yeah, you would need to spend a degree of success against it. So roll your gun. I have first aid also that I wanted to roll. We're waiting on that because it's treating it.

They're suppressing fire at the moment on this. It's five degrees of success. So you can basically pin them all, whoever's going there down, that's behind you. Okay, so you just start just doing burst fires. You are going to suppress something that's just inside of the smoke cloud as roll your failure one failure all right gun jam yeah gun jam you slide it back as you can you to try to fire and it just pulls back and you have to take a

whole round to clear it as you get on the other side you watch band date is starting to bleed through we're definitely applying pressure both sides at least at least it went all the way through it's not stuck in yeah um all right in not dead yet all right in my pack uh i've got uh medical gear. Instead of cauterizing, we're going to sew this up. All right, and I need some anesthesia as well. Okay. So you have some medical training? I have a little bit. I can probably get the job down. I can stick you up. All right, let's do this. All right. Can I assist him with a rule? Yeah, yeah. I get a bonus on my first day for his... You're gonna get two difficulty dice because of the pain.

Yep. Okay. I'm gonna roll my first use my basic first aid. And then you can use the kit bonus. That is also. You had a times two kit. Yeah. I do. Okay, cool. So First eight is you have one in addition to the perception. That's just a four right now. Okay. So you're both eight. Ray. They know our general position.

We don't have much time. We need to move again soon. Just give me a minute. My hands are covered in blood. I'm trying to push it together. 44. Ever get to the end of a podcast episode and think, now what?

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No degrees of failure. No degrees of failure. Two degrees of success. Two degrees of success. Success. Oh, all right. Yeah, what I want to do is to staunch. Yeah.

So how many degrees of success does you have? Two. One degree of success is to staunch it. So it gets rid of the open wound. All right, so it's no longer an open wound. Right, and so we basically stitch it shut. Yeah. And then you had two.

So I'm gonna have you apply some localized anesthesia to kind of numb the pain. To negate some difficulty. To negate some difficulty. I just want to get mobile. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So I grab your arm, and I put my hand over your mouth as I start stitching you up, and I can feel your hand start to dig your nails into my arm, and then I pull out the anesthetic needle, and I said, well, this is the good part. And I put it in you, right? And I'm gonna say, hey, you wanna know what always helped me get rid of the pain?

Just do it. I'm gonna slap my face. Fuck. Hey, how you feel now? Just go do it. Good. And then I'm gonna finish up, jabbing the rest of the anesthetic in there,

get him nice and numb, do what I can to get the suture with my hands are now covered in blood. It's just there's blood all over my entire hands, and I'm gonna like, it's a sloppy job, but it's sealed. And it's sealed. Both sides. As soon as he's done, I immediately come over, and I, you know, get around Band-Aid,

around Band-Aid and I say hey we're leaving right now Ray cover us right lead the way right so picking point stealth yeah laying low let's do this let's see what's going on on top so did this suppressing fire just basically buy us enough time to finish all that I yeah buy us more time but I would like actually you to make a spot listen because you're the one doing the suppressing fire at the moment please oh five five so three degrees of success, no, four degrees of success. What do you do?

I'm spotless. Oh, spotless. Okay, so as you begin to move, as she's saying, we gotta go, we gotta get it from move, you basically look, you have to see where it's all there, and from the top of that fucking building, I see that four-story building, you see him and you see a glint of a scope

just for a second before another bullet just whizzes right by. I'm immediately shooting, moving my gun up to him. Right, okay. So I'm gonna actually need to make you have a dodge check this I need a reaction roll for GM transparency since lives at stake here your shot was a 5% I rolled a 5 this is what I just rolled for him on the second roll as well to all right I did it I dodged one degree of success okay so that's gonna get

rid of one damage dice okay but he's gonna still roll three more because he got four degrees of success okay so this is three damage dice as you're watching Watching this scope kind of come down. Ray, if you've braced this door up, and that's what you've been using for cover. And as Stingray lifts her head up to see this glint of a scope just for a second, as the bullet just swings by, it goes through the windshield as it strikes her.

Also in probably maybe here, where the vitals are, but also glass just, and just shatters and just cuts face. In fact, I might go so far as to say, maybe even blinding you in one eye at this point if it's not treated properly. And you can feel just cut glass, just raked down your arm as you can feel,

again, it's a high caliber round cleanly, just in and out as it went through your side as you're now doubling over in pain as this incredibly lucky sniper has taken two shots down at this point. What's next? We gotta get some cover fire back on him, or he's just gonna.

I wanna try and shoot this guy. So did she not get her shot on here? Oh yeah, she did succeed. So let's have you fire at the same time, take your shot, see if you can do this. Okay, I'm also shooting. That's fine, both of you. I mean, I'm imagining yours

is gonna be slightly after this. Awesome, five degrees of success. Two degrees of success. All right, well, both of you can just lay it open over there if you want. It's super far away, but you've got the 30-odd, She does. With the scope.

Okay. And you can basically, you're not gonna get really hardly any bonuses, but you can just suppress up to high hell up there if you wanna get. Right, and basically as soon as I hear Band-Aid go down, I swing around and scream and start unloading on this guy right as I see it come, hit me and splatter me in the face with glass.

But at least I take some damage on him, right? Right, well, let's roll damage. Roll it, roll the redemption dice. So three, five, eleven. Damage. More damage. 16, 18 and five is 23, 23 and 47. Okay. So you unload into this thing as you hear her high caliber rifle,

pot just and just as you're unloading around into there before this glass shatters upon you. And Jenny, you see this figure who was propped, literally right up against it, he just goes down. I mean, it's difficult to tell if you shot him through or if he's just hit the dirt, but he is not up there. And you watch his head just goes down. Get out. Let's go.

I want you guys to get out. I don't know that I can go. I'm down. I help you. I help you. Kent, you're helping Band-Aid. You're leading the way. Mm-hmm.

Right. I'm trying to move them from cover to cover, like slapping up against the parts of cars and things like that. Did you make the stealth check already? I did, and I had one degree of failure, but I want to spend a competency point to cancel that. Great, do it. So spend the competency, you're more than competent

in this at the moment, and you have cover to benefit you. So guys, you're winding through these buildings, and you can still hear shouts behind you, but at this point you're weaving through the labyrinth of cars, it hurts. I mean, it's not stopping. you look down and you can actually see that the it's bleeding from both sides. Yeah, and I'm holding it as much as I can.

One side with this and one side this is she's got her arms around me. With two hands, as you're putting press around it. Every step you take, you feel a squirt. I don't think I'm aware of that. You got no idea with going. As it's putting through and you're just fighting through the pain. As you continue to wind and twist through this labyrinth of old world metal, you continue to make your way across the Missouri River.

You can hear the water rushing on the left and the right. As Ray, your eyes begin to pool of blood as you can feel it start to just gush in your hands as you move every single step. In Band-Aid, even though you have local anesthetic applied, it hurts with every single step to the point you to keep your hands down. And you leave Jefferson City. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Tenless? Then you are going to love our podcast Disney Countdown. Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, aka Jarendell, and we are the host of the hit Disney podcast Disney.

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